Query 12. Hope of Heaven and Fear of Hell
Query. 12. — Is the hope of heaven and fear of hell to be excluded from the motives of the believer’s obedience? And if not, how can The Marrow be defended, which expressly excludes them, though it allows other motives?
Ans.— Here we are referred to the third particular heading, in which we think The Marrow is injured by the Assembly’s act, which for brevity’s sake we will not transcribe: but agreeable both to our Representation and the scope of The Marrow, we answer that taking heaven to be a state of endless felicity in the enjoyment of God in Christ, we are so far from thinking that this is to be excluded from being a motive for the believer’s obedience, that we think it is the chief end of man, next to the glory of God. Psalm 73.25, “Whom have I in heaven but you?” etc. Heaven, instead of being a reward to the believer, would be a desolate wilderness to him without the enjoyment of a God in Christ. The Lord and the Lamb are the light of that place. God himself is the portion of his people; he is their shield and exceeding great reward. The very copestone of the happiness of heaven lies in being “forever with the Lord, and in beholding his glory;” and the believer is indeed to have his eye on this as the recompense of reward, and a noble motive for obedience. But to form conceptions of heaven as a place of pleasure and happiness without the former views of it, and to fancy that this heaven is to be obtained by our own works and doings, is unworthy of a believer, a child of God — in that regard, it is slavish, legal, mercenary, and carnal.
As for the fear of hell being a motive of the believer’s obedience, we consider it one of the special branches of that glorious liberty with which Christ has made his people free, so that they yield obedience to the Lord, not out of slavish fear of hell and wrath, but out of a child-like love and willing mind. Confession, chap. 20.1. “Christ has delivered us out of the hands of our enemies, that we might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness, all the days of our lives,” Luke 1.74, 75. A filial fear of God and of his fatherly displeasure, is worthy of the believer, being a fruit of faith, and of the spirit of adoption. But a slavish fear of hell and wrath, from which he is delivered by Christ, is not a fruit of faith, but of unbelief. And as far as a believer is not drawn with love, but is driven on in his obedience with a slavish fear of hell, we think he is under a spirit of bondage. And judging this to be The Marrow’s sense of rewards and punishments with respect to a believer, we think it may and ought to be defended.
And this doctrine, which we apprehend to be the truth, stands supported not only by Scripture and our Confession of Faith, but also by the suffrages of some of our soundest divines; for instance Mr. Rutherford: — “Believers,” he says, “are to be sad for their sins, as offensive to the authority of the Lawgiver and the love of Christ, though they are not to fear the eternal punishment of them;” sorrow for sin, and fear for sin, are most different to us. Again, says the same author, “Servile obedience, under apprehension of legal terror, was never commanded in the spiritual law of God to the Jews, more than to us,” Durham (loco citato.) “The believer,” he says, “being freed from the law as a covenant, his life does not depend on the promise annexed to the law, nor is he in danger by the threatenings adjoined to it.
Both of these are made void to believers through Christ.” And to conclude, we are clearly of Dr. Owen’s mind about the use of threatenings of everlasting wrath with reference to believers. Though he admits they are declarative of God’s hatred of sin, and his will to punish it, yet in regard to the execution of them, it is inconsistent with the covenant, and with God’s faithfulness in it. He says, “The use of them cannot be to beget in believers an anxious, doubting, solicitous fear about the punishment threatened, grounded on a supposition that the person fearing will be overtaken with it, nor to beget a perplexing fear of hell-fire. Even though it is often a consequence of some of God’s dispensations toward us from our own sins, or a consequence of the weakness of our faith, it is nowhere prescribed to us as a duty; nor is the ingenerating of it in us the design of any of the threatenings of God.” His reasons, together with the nature of that fear which the threatening of eternal wrath ought to beget in believers, may be viewed among the rest of the authorities.
These are some thoughts that have been offered to us upon the queries, which we lay before the Reverend Commission with all becoming deference, humbly craving that charity (which thinks no evil) may procure a favourable construing of our words, so that no sense may be put upon them, nor inference drawn from them, which we never intended. And in regard to the tenor of our doctrine, and of our aims in our conduct (though with a mixture of much sinful weakness), we have been sincerely pointed at the honour of the Lord Jesus as our king as well as priest, as our sanctification as well as our righteousness. We can only regret that we have been aspersed, as turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and casting off the obligation of the holy law of the Ten Commandments. For we are persuaded that the damnation of those who either do that, or teach so, is just and unavoidable if mercy does not prevent it. But now, after this plain and ingenuous declaration of our principles, if we must still lie under the same load of reproach, it is our comfort that we have the testimony of our conscience clearing us in that matter.2Cor 1.12 And we have no doubt that the Lord will in due time bring forth our righteousness as the light, and our judgment as the noon-day.Psa 37.6 We only add that we adhere to our Representation and Petition in all points; and so much the more, now that we have already observed the sad fruits, and bad improvement made of the Assembly’s deed, complained of in it.
These answers, contained in this and the preceding pages (namely: of the manuscript given in) are subscribed at Edinburgh, March 12th, 1722, by us,
Messrs. JAMES HOG, Carnock.
THOMAS BOSTON, Etterick.
JOHN WILLIAMSON, Inveresk.
JAMES KID, Queensferry.
GABRIEL WILSON, Maxton.
EBENEZER ERSKINE, Portmoack.
RALPH ERSKINE, Dunfermline.
JAMES WARDLAW, Dunfermline.
HENRY DAVIDSON, Galashiels.
JAMES BATHGATE, Orwel.
WILLIAM HUNTER, Lilliesleaf.
THE END.